In the three months since I quit my job, I've been trying to get back to the "other" rhythm of life in an organized way. Almost half of the week is spent talking about work, writing proposals, and going to meetings, while the other half is spent meeting with friends, having coffee and breakfast at home, and walking through Beijing's hutongs. Often, there is a moment when I suddenly feel the coziness of wasted time, and the small sense of happiness that comes with it. I believe that Fei, who left the Flying Fish Show a year earlier than I did and stayed at home, experienced this more deeply. So we walked the streets, wine and meat through the intestines, and time and time again can not touch the soul of the plea, talked about a each other think "happier" topic - picnic.

Before that, of course, we had the same ****ing question: "Why are we having a picnic?"

After that, we each went home and opened up our computer pages, social networking apps, movie and TV episodes, and world-famous books, and started looking for some trace of it and a rational explanation.

Walter Levy wrote in his book "The Picnic: A History" that "the picnic came with recent history, the transition from idyllic to urban life, the fall of the village and the rise of the city."

While humans have been foraging outdoors since the dawn of time, it wasn't until medieval hunting parties that people began to deliberately carry large quantities of food along with them. And what we now understand as a picnic is:

The purposeful organization of a gathering outdoors in a natural setting. And this behavior probably emerged around 500 years ago.

When you go on a picnic, you actually want to escape from mediocrity. In fact, people have long fantasized that picnics can take them out of the city and back to a simpler, more natural state of life. And this kind of escape seems to be more evident in works of art.

The picnic then became a popular pastime, a way for the rich to spend their time and for artists to indulge their idyllic visions.

Let's take a look at some of the most moving picnics as seen through the eyes of artists and painted by their brushes.

Picnic on the Grass by Filippo d'Angeli, also known as Filippo Napolitano (1589?-1629). This painting's precise depiction of nature reveals a dynamic, living, and wonderful world by the river: the lifelike, exquisitely varied woodland and the flocks of birds flying into the vast sky; closer to the front, the artist vividly depicts a picnic on the grass and the utensils and food used for the picnic in a smaller scene.

In the 17th century, noblewomen dressed in flamboyant Baroque gowns drank from crystal goblets and men talked at length about literature, art, politics and the military. The picnic had become a special form of socializing.

The Picnic in May (1873, Pal. Sinej. Mercy, Hungary. Collection of the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest) The painter depicts a bright May landscape, with green grass and flowers in full bloom, where several gentlemen and ladies are having lunch, encompassing the scenery of nature to their heart's content, enjoying their freedom and happiness, and enjoying the gifts of nature. The painting expresses the painter's desire and pursuit of freedom, depicting the ideal picture in his mind with an idealistic color.

French painter Edouard Manet created the painting in 1863, and exhibited the controversial Lunch on the Grass in the Salon des Failleurs, which is the monumental work that Napoleon wanted to whip. After that, the world of painting saw a rapid change. And Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Luncheon on a Boat" painting is also a picnic theme, those who suffered the Franco-Prussian War finally found a respite in the countryside field, at that time it was the beginning of the modern life (La vie Moderne), people try all kinds of daily life outside of the extreme, and what is more natural than the picnic more soothing to the soul?

Manet, one of the founders of 19th-century Impressionism, was born in Paris, France, in 1832. He never took part in Impressionist exhibitions, but his innovative artistic attitude deeply influenced emerging painters such as Monet, Cézanne and Van Gogh, which in turn brought painting into the path of modernism. Another work he created, "Family Picnic", shows the family's noble life and elegant and romantic realm of life through sharp color contrasts.

Between 1865 and 1867, Monet painted several large-scale works, all with the theme of 'Picnic on the Grass'. In these paintings, Monet avoided Manet's controversial moral issues, and instead used the usual beautiful images to express the real life of vacationing citizens in the park or outdoor forest on a Parisian holiday afternoon.

Also outdoors, also for lunch, and in a setting where "a little sunlight sifted through the gaps between the green shades of the dense, tall trees," Monet's paintings feature "two women sitting on the edge of the tablecloth, spreading out the lace of their voluminous skirts" and "two women sitting on the edge of the tablecloth, spreading out the lace of their voluminous skirts. "or" a man reclining by a tree trunk, wearing a white shirt, black undershirt, pants and boots "or" dressed in fashionable clothing ".

By the 1930s, a group of famous photographers had begun to take pictures of those picnickers in their spare time, and Bresson's "Sunday on the Marne" was like bringing the previous paintings to life.

Those key words about picnics

Key word one: hunting

The very beginnings of picnics were the banquets of the aristocracy after hunting. Walter Levy, author of "The Picnic: A History," says the act of sitting down with friends and family in the wilderness to eat some food and drink should have been around since ancient times, but there just wasn't an official term for it. Instead, it evolved into a written record that dates back to the nobility's habit of eating in the field after a hunt.

At the end of the 14th century, a French count of Phoebus book "Book of Hunting" is a detailed record of the European nobility at the time of eating out in the details: when the nobles go hunting, the nobleman's servants will be in the wild to set up a table on the tablecloth, set tableware, prepared by the chef early in the morning before the start of the semi-finished products, such as hams and pies and so on dealt with, the table to drink the wine is also in the mountain springs in the ice, to ensure that the entrance is cool and cool, and so on, and so on. The process was actually not easy at all, but rather a symbol of the exclusive nobility. This form of outdoor drinking is considered the earliest origin of the picnic.

Keyword 2: socialize

With the emergence of the middle class in the 18th century, enjoyment was not just reserved for the upper-class aristocracy. The European gentry socialized in the field to create a fine and elegant meal, which also became an important social occasion for young men and women to get to know each other.

Jane Austen's novels and plays have been written in the same vein. In Jane Austen's novels and plays, there are numerous scenes of picnics, where men and women sit or lean in the beautiful scenery of the wilderness, each showing his or her own style, with colorful ingredients and tableware, and the people and the landscape become one, which also became the best inspiration for painters.

Keyword three: share

Picnic (picnic) the word is more to be considered a product of modern times, "picnic history" test, the word picnic from the French Pique-nique, the original refers to each participant should provide their own food and wine tea, the word later spread to the United Kingdom, a group of love for the French culture of the Londoners formed a picnic society (Pic- Nic Society), members of the group each carry their own food and tea, this word later passed to the United Kingdom, a group of love for French culture Londoners composed of picnic societies (Pic- Nic Society), members of the group each carry their own food and tea. Nic Society), each member of the group carries a meal to the agreed location, while eating and drinking, while acting, reciting a few lines of poetry, and gradually appeared the prototype of the Western picnic.

And in the East, the habit of picnics can be traced back to the Qingming Cold Food Festival. The old custom of the cold food festival in March of the lunar calendar, the people prohibited fire, only cold food, to the Tang Dynasty, the cold food slowly evolved into a day of ancestral tomb-sweeping, after the completion of cleaning up the gathering of trekking excursions, bring offerings or meals in the field as lunch to eat, but also evolved into a form of picnic.

Particularly in ancient times, women could not go out on weekdays, and the day of the Qingming Festival, ancestor worship, trekking is a good time for women to go out in ancient times, they will be well-dressed on this day, go out early to pay tribute to their ancestors, and then trekking, so in ancient times, the Qingming Festival is also a festival for women, they can go to the countryside to enjoy the spring, kite-flying, and then a picnic. From this point of view, the meaning of picnic has never changed, no matter in the East or West, lies in the spirit of carrying your own food and sharing it with others.

Keyword 4: Picnic Basket

The most important container for carrying food is the rattan picnic basket. This form of basket seems to be specially made for picnic, as long as you see it, you will naturally think of an elegant picnic on the grass. But when people used this basket, it was purely because the weight of the food in the basket was considerable, and from the point of view of the former material, rattan was the most durable, so rattan baskets were mostly used. But the impression of the famous painting is so deep that now, even if the lightweight and heavy material generation, as long as the thought of picnics, we will still want to use rattan picnic basket with food, seems to be more elegant.

Keyword five: picnic mat

Ordinary people are difficult to sit on the grass on the butt, but the magic of the picnic mat is like a magic mat, as long as a shop on the ground, it seems to be declared: this piece of land is our turf, adults can be in the moment to leave aside the reserve or sit or lie down, children can run at will, we eat, drink and laugh, picnic mats, seems to be an extension of home. The picnic mats seem to be an extension of the home.

Keyword six: free breathing

One of the spirits of picnics lies in returning to nature and relaxing the sense of free breathing. In the case of the low-key Japanese, the cherry blossom viewing season has evolved into the peak of the Japanese picnic, with family members or coworkers in the cherry blossom tree or eating barbecue or lunchboxes, drinking beer and chatting. More and more people in Taiwan, too, like to sit under the flowers and enjoy a piece of themselves during the blossom viewing season.

While there is much criticism that cherry blossom viewing season is the loudest time in the Japanese wilderness, and that the elegance of blossom viewing is lost, to some extent that is one of the points of a picnic: that people can be more relaxed and unpretentious than they normally would be. Especially in the modern, highly technological world, picnics are synonymous with relaxing and taking a breather, which is the key to the popularity of picnics from ancient times to the present day, and even more popular.

Themed picnics

White Picnic Day in 1988 was the star of the themed picnic world. When the founder of the event returned to Paris in 1988, having lived abroad for many years, he wanted to throw a party and invite his former friends to join him. The number of people attending made the venue problematic, so he chose the Bois de Boulogne, a large park to the west of the city, and agreed that everyone would wear white to make it easier to identify each other. The party was such a success that everyone agreed to meet again the following year in the same format. The private dinner party has since become a well-known social event in Parisian society.

The White Picnic continues as a tradition. It is held on the longest day of the week in June and can be attended by as many as 10,000 people. Over the years due to the success of this event, it has now become fully legalized, with similarly themed events taking place in around forty countries around the globe.

My memories of picnics

After seeing so many colorful picnics, we began to think back to those picnic-related moments and scenes in our own lives, and the closest thing we could think of was the "spring picnic" of our childhood. On that day of celebration, every child would bring the food prepared at home and his or her favorite small objects to the park, the mountains and the fields.

My memories of the spring picnic are not so good.

Because every year (at least in elementary school), my spring picnic was basically a dinner party with my mom's well-prepared steamed buns with deviled eggs (in fact, that's what I ate on the way to school every day when I wasn't on a spring picnic). So usually I was alone behind the tree three or five mouthfuls of food, and then went to run with classmates and choked themselves half dead. Once in a hundred years, my family gave me a little extra pocket money, and I secretly bought a can of Guinness before the assembly, which was confiscated on the spot by the teacher for months because it delayed the group's departure time.

---- I tried to hold my head up high to keep the tears from flowing down ----

p>So to this day, my heart is still filled with the desire for a picnic. So me, Xiaofei, and Mr. Yang, a businessman who lives in Pao Yao Ju,**** together formed a mysterious lifestyle research organization, 3T Life Guide, and started exploring and experiencing this picnic thing firsthand. In the process, we have made more and more interesting and like-minded friends.

I believe that in the near future, we will be able to present and share with you more of the joys and beauties of "picnics". Of course, the most important thing is to have your own unforgettable picnic.

The picnic is on its way, with a calm and relaxed step.

Images from the web and original.

Some text from:

"How to prepare a perfect picnic?

"Picnic: Spring and Impressionism"

"It turns out that picnics are just a rich man's game"

The most beautiful thing is a red sunset